This report is from the American Institutes for Research.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Twenty percent of U.S. college students completing 4-year degrees – and 30 percent of students earning 2-year degrees – have only basic quantitative literacy skills, meaning they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies, according to a new national survey by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The study was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Here are a few findings from the study:
More than 75 percent of students at 2-year colleges and more than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges do not score at the proficient level of literacy. This means that they lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers with different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials.
This is almost inconceivable to me. Lucky for us that voting rates
The literacy skills of college students are directly related to the education of their parents: children whose parents graduated college or attended graduate school have higher literacy than students whose parents did not graduate high school or stopped after receiving a high school diploma or GED.
Despite variations in income, most differences in the literacy of students across income groups are not significant.
Now, I found this interesting. In the end, what mattered most
As a parent, it is not wise to assume that the grade school, middle school, high school or university is going to "teach" your child the skills they need to be successful in life. Yet another reason to homeschool. (To be entirely grammatically correct, I would need to say "This is yet another reason to homeschool." My use of vernacularisms in this post seemed appropriate in the informal atmosphere of the blogosphere.)
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Related Tags: college students, literacy, math skills, college graduates, quantitative literacy skills, The Pew Charitable Trusts, American Institutes for Research
7 comments:
I whole-heartedly second that emotion. I was reading an article the other day about a woman who was hospitalized for intoxication. She lost the drinking game while playing Current Events Trivial Pursuit. Now, illegal substances were also involved. But, as I was reading this article I was wondering how could someone lose so miserably when the topic is events of the last year? Your post helps me answer that question.
Very, very sad that we cannot even expect college students to have the education of (what used to be) your average middle school student.
Just one more argument to toss up to folks when they start going on about how my kids won't do well in college because they are homeschooled. Seems to me public school students aren't doing so hot, either. I'll take my chances (and full responsibility) at home.
All I can say is that I am not surprised.
One just has to look at the number of remedial courses that colleges are currently offering. It is incredible that they would even accept half of these kids into their schools to begin with.
In the 1800's the literacy rate may not have been as high - but those who were literate handled some pretty difficult material (by today's standards). They read and understood the classics. Today, we have a higher per capita literacy rate, in general, but either many choose not to read or what they do read is total trash.
It is all together sad and frightening.
This is crazy.
So let me understand this. More kids than ever are going to college, but in fact they are not smarter, they are graduating "dumber". Meanwhile the cost of college education is going up and up.
My husband estimated that by the time my 9 year old goes to college it will cost $100K PER YEAR.
It seems that college education is more like an extension of what used to be taught in high school. Meanwhile what is being taught in high school? Isn't 13 years enough to teach students things so they DON'T have to do remedial work in college?
And the same folks who are in charge of public education for K-12 want to have mandatory preschool, administered by them. Why? To start teaching more, earlier, to end up with what, in the end?
I am more confused than ever about what is going on in this country. At times like these it seems society is going down the tubes!
This is enough to make me buckle down and go overboard with what I am teaching my kids in our homeschooling, so they don't end up inadequate!!
I was very interested in this article up until the point of the injected comments by Janine. How can a person make such an argument about the learning skills of today's youth with such poor spelling and grammer. I sure hope you homeschool better than you write!
"Grammer"? 'Nuf said.
Wow! I must have hit a nerve.
I msut agre thta my typng cann bee a bit msesy but alteast I sine my name.
But hay, I be a produck of the publick scool sistem. Corectin spellin and grammer wood huv damajed my self steam and it'd limutud mie crativity.
;-)
All joking aside, I don't know how people did it before word processors and the spelling/grammar check option.
I’m old enough to remember using a typewriter and making corrections with white out.
"Can you imaging how scary things would be if people who can't summarize the arguments in a newspaper editorial or compare credit card offeres offers were deciding public policy?"
I've got news for you - they already are. And yes, it is scary.
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